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mix

Once you've recorded everything, the next step is the Mixing process, in which you balance your tracks with EQ, Compression, Limiting and other effects to achieve a well balanced track, where every instrument has its own space in the frequency spectrum. Here I'll explain how I processed the Vocals during this step.

vocal mixing

Cleaning

The way I mix vocals can be split into 3 main parts: ​

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The aim of this step is to clear the vocals, removing everything that's not necessary such as backing noises, air exhalations and harmful frequencies, in order to not bring them up in the next steps. Here's how:

  1. First of all, once you have all your vocals layed down on your DAW, you start by removing everything that's in the audio files that you don't want to hear in the final mix. You can eather lower it down in volume or delete them. This will leave you with several cuts of the main audio. Then put a little fade (10 or 20 ms) on the start and end of each cut, so that the cuts don't show up that much.

  2. When you've finished the first step, you can start tuning your vocals. The most famous vocal tuner is Autotune, and its fame came because of the fact that it's automatic but, although I used some Autotune in this project, I mainly used Melodyne, which at the end is the same thing, but Melodyne is a manual tool, and I like that, because you have more control over your vocals.

  3. Now that you have your vocal as you want them to be, you can start adding EQ to remove the unwanted frequencies. I always recomend to cut from 20 hz to between 50 and 100 hz, to remove all the rumble thats captured through the mic. Then it's up to you whether if you want to add gain onto some frequencies or reduce gain in some of them. The idea is to make your vocals get through the mix, withouth "fighting" with other instruments. Remember it's the main part of the song.

  4. Once EQ is layed down, now's time for Deesser. This effect helps us reduce in volume the "S" sound, which if you turn up in volume can make it painful to listen to it. It's just a reduction between the 7000 hz and 14000hz, but it's an important step to achieve profesional sounding vocals.

Dynamic Control

The aim of this step is to control the dynamics of the vocals, which mainly focuses on the volume, using various tools. Here's how it's done:

  • Now that your vocals are totally clean, you need to make them sound consistent and powerfull. This process is usually done with a Compressor, a tool that changes the dynamics of the voice audio so that high volume parts get "compressed" and lowered in gain and low volume parts get pushed up.

    • This makes a voice audio that looks like this:

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    • Become this:

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  • The importance of this step is the fact that the voice achieves a constant energy, with no ups and downs. That gives the voice a powerfull sound later when it's being truly processed. But it isn't that easy. If you over compress a signal, this one will lose all of its dynamic range, and so it will sound unreal and overprocessed.                                              So here's how I approach this step with the compressors:

  1. First of all, I always add a Basic Compressor such as Supercharger or CLA-2A and start reducing until the meter shows a reduction of 4 to 5 dBs, depending on how I want the vocals to sound (more powerful or smoothier). This reduction is very subtle and it's only used to create a base for what comes next.

  2. Now comes the complex part. The technique I'll use now is called Paral·lel Processing, which explained quickly consists of, instead of putting a compressor on the Inserts of a track, put it on an external bus and send it to the original signal. Then you over compress the external signal with the compressor and mix it with the original signal. The fact that you're mixing 2 separate signals gives it the name of Paral·lel compression. This techinque makes your vocals sound big, powerful and the compression is almost unnoticeable, but it's very hard to approach it the correct way. 

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compressor-difference2.jpg
compressor-difference1.jpg

The audio file has some peaks and the overall image looks unbalanced

Now the audio file hasn't got peaks and the overall image looks more balanced and consistent

ADDING Efects

The last step is what everybody would thing Vocal Production is all about, but the truth is that if you don't do the other steps, you'll end having a simple and boring vocal track, and that's not what we are going for. So, for this step what we'll do is apply effects in order to add colour, brightness, "punchiness" and that kind of things that you want in a professional sounding vocal track. While the other had some rules or a path to follow, this one hasn't got any of them, and here's were the producers really show their styles or strengths, as this is the most artistic part of this process. So, with all this said, now I'll show you how I approach my vocals.

  1. First of all, I always start adding an EQ to make very suttle changes, just in case you've didn't notice of any issue in the first and second step.

  2. Once this is done, I start applyng all the effects that I want as a Sending to the main vocal track. What this means is that instead of "effecting" the vocal signal with the effects, I mix the dry vocal signal with another signal which has the effects on. This way I can control everything more acuratelly. The effects I use the most in this step are Reverb (Short, Mid and Long), Delays (Mono Delay) and a Stereo Imager. I sometimes try to do this step with other effects such as Distortion (Paral·lel Distortion) to experiment with different sounds. 

  3. Now's time for the effects which really affect the signal of the vocal. Here every producer can choose the ones they want for different purposes, so here's my list of more liked effects and why I apply them:

    • Ozone Imager​: This is a Stereo Imager, and what it does is, by using a variety of psichoacustic techniques, give a more stereo or wide  feeling to the signal.

    • Sausage Fattener: This plugin is a mix of Compression, Saturation and Maximizer, and although it's not clear what it really does, I love how it boost the mid-low frequencies, which can be destroyed by the EQ processing.

    • Echo Boy: Echo Boy on its own is an Analogic Simulated Delay, which means that although it isn't a phisical effect, it's programmed in order to sound as if it was. Most of the time I use it to create a more widening effect, but other times I use it as a regular Delay tool for very especific cases we're I really want the Delay to have a presence in the mix.

    • FabFilter Saturn: FabFilter Saturn is a digital Saturator, and as its name says, it saturates the signal. This makes the harmonics of the vocals pop out and give it a bright and warm sound. 

    • Decapitator: This plugin is brought by the same company as Echo Boy, but instead of being a Delay, it is a Compressor/Distortion Plugin.

  4. Now that my vocal track is almost perfect, I will do some Automation on the effects to make it more dynamic, because not every effect is needed the same way in all the parts of a track, and finally add a last EQ or compression if I feel that's needed.

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This is the way I approach my

profesional sounding Vocals.

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